Yes, this problem persists on Solaris 9 (SPARC) even with Python 2.7.1.
The problematic processes are:
ssahmed@blade:[~]$ ps -ef|grep -i python
ssahmed 480 418 0 15:30:25 pts/1 9:14 ./python -Wd -3 -E -tt ./Lib/test/regrtest.py -l
ssahmed 3062 480 0 15:43:22 pts/1 0:00 /space/home/ssahmed/Python-2.7.1/python -c if 1: import sys, os, ti
ssahmed 3063 3062 0 15:43:22 pts/1 0:00 /space/home/ssahmed/Python-2.7.1/python -c if 1: import sys, os, ti
I was able to workaround the problem by killing the bottom-most process in the list.